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Monday, January 4, 2010

Garden mosaics

Can't work in the garden these days, but for Barbie Henig, that's no matter. She does her mosaics for the garden and other outdoor uses year-round. This is the number '7' for her street address. She collects beach glass, old dishes and pottery for her creations, smashing or cutting them into smaller pieces, attaching them to a surface - rock, tile, BOWLING BALL, terra cotta pot - with adhesive and filling in the spaces with grout. Her designs are sometimes spontaneous, more often thought or sketched out ahead of time and then put into place. Barbie has a fulltime job in Center City but mosaics fill the rest of her "spaces" and time. She teaches at Tyler Arboretum and other places around the region, and she's the subject of a story I'm working on now for later this month. Visiting her and seeing firsthand her excitement for recasting old objects into beautiful objets was a great way to welcome in a new year on the job.
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About Virginia A. Smith
Ginny Smith, a Philadelphia native, worked as a reporter at newspapers in New York, Connecticut and Ohio – with six short months at the end of the Bulletin tossed in – before returning to Philadelphia in 1985 to join the Inquirer. Her favorite beats here have included Center City, roving around Pennsylvania (and getting paid for it!) and alternative medicine. She’s also been City Editor and Pennsylvania Editor. Ginny has been happily writing – and learning - about gardening fulltime since 2006. She’s won two silver medals of achievement from the national Garden Writers Association and in 2011, Bartram’s Garden honored her with its Green Exemplar award for her stories about “the region’s deeply rooted horticultural history, cultural attractions and bountiful gardens.”
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